Of course they can get viruses and of course they can get hacked into. Anyone who believes otherwise kind of deserves what's coming. Many vulnerabilities are known and Apple has issued patches - something Microsoft has been doing for years now, making them way ahead of Mac OS in the security game.

No one serious believes in security through obscurity in this day and age. Your only advantage is that cross platform infection is very difficult so windows worms do not spread to macs and a mac-only worm would spread extremely slowly. But targeted intrusion? No problem. It's only a question of desire and market penetration now.

Besides given how plentiful bandwidth is these days I wouldn't be surprised to see combo mac-windows worms coming out.

Edit: ok, maybe that last statement is a bit irresponsible. There are still gazillions of windows PCs around the world compared to a handful of macs. I don't expect to start seeing mac worms unless someone gets convinced he can somehow infect all macs, and that that would result in more zombies than if he went only after windows machines with vulnerability x unpatched.

"Welding was faster, cheaper and, in theory,
produced a more reliable product. But sailors do
not float on theory, and the welded tankers had a
most annoying habit of splitting in two."
-J.W. Morris

Screw what the AV says, did your Mac malfunction at all, or perform any better after the scan? I doubt it. There is a possibility of spyware on the mac, but this is easy to avoid if you use the right browser and don't visit clearly malicious sites.

Screw what the AV says, did your Mac malfunction at all, or perform any better after the scan? I doubt it. There is a possibility of spyware on the macany computer, but this is easy to avoid if you use the right browser and don't visit clearly malicious sites.

Screw what the AV says, did your Mac malfunction at all, or perform any better after the scan? I doubt it. There is a possibility of spyware on the macany computer, but this is easy to avoid if you use the right browser and don't visit clearly malicious sites.

sorry but i couldn't help it

Not true, a computer that has never been turned on cannot have spyware.

Screw what the AV says, did your Mac malfunction at all, or perform any better after the scan? I doubt it. There is a possibility of spyware on the macany computer, but this is easy to avoid if you use the right browser and don't visit clearly malicious sites.

sorry but i couldn't help it

Not true, a computer that has never been turned on cannot have spyware.

It is not that Macs can't get viruses, but that they have been so rare due to the "scarcity" of Mac users. The rarity of Mac viruses will cause them to be all the more effective when they occur more frequently.

Sophos here is creating the illusion of protection; I'm confident that every 'threat' in that screenshot was simply a positive hit on a windows payload. While I am aware of several vulnerabilities in the wild, the vast majority require authentication (ie malware), the few that don't aren't typically self replicating.

Story wrote:

Solt wrote:Besides given how plentiful bandwidth is these days I wouldn't be surprised to see combo mac-windows worms coming out.

Haven't there been cross platform viruses before?

I doubt it, most vulnerabilities are platform specific. Software from a vendor compiled for both operating systems generally won't both be vulnerable to the same exploit.

I remember reading a while back that a common botnet used a java exploit to run on any computer that used java, including Macs and Windows. A snapshot of the machines infected was taken, and around 20% were Macs, 80% Windows. Considering only 10-12% (the last time I checked) of computers are Macs, this suggests that OSX is actually more vulnerable to this bot net.

The consensus I've heard is that Macs get viruses less frequently, but they're almost IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of when they do happen. Makes sense kinda, Macs are supposed to be user-friendly so they're hard to "crack open and fix" (so to speak).

I'm sadly unable to post links, but I read something interesting the other day.Some guy named Charlie Miller has figured out a way to hack into apple laptops through the microcontroller that passes battery level and stuff to the operating system.The problem here is that even if you do a full format of your macbook, you wont erase the memory of that microcontroller, so the next time you boot your OS after reinstalling, it would just upload the virus again.

Two quotes from the article:

Miller discovered the two passwords used to access and alter Apple batteries by pulling apart and analyzing a 2009 software update that Apple instituted to fix a problem with Macbook batteries. Using those keys, he was soon able to reverse engineer the chip’s firmware and cause it to give whatever readings he wanted to the operating system and charger, or even rewrite the firmware completely to do his bidding.

“You could put a whole hard drive in, reinstall the software, flash the BIOS, and every time it would reattack and screw you over. There would be no way to eradicate or detect it other than removing the battery.” says Miller.

For people interested in reading the whole article, search on Forbes for:Apple Laptops Vulnerable To Hack That Kills Or Corrupts Batteries - Andy Greenberg

Current mac OSes are based on UNIX, which has been made for multi-user systems since 1970. Permissions ('who/what can do what with what') were central to it from the start.Windows was meant for personal computers only, security has historically been lax and many programs required admin privileges to run properly. Things are improving, but Windows still has a long way to go here.

LEGO won't be ready for the average user until it comes pre-assembled, in a single unified theme, and glued together so it doesn't come apart.

Current mac OSes are based on UNIX, which has been made for multi-user systems since 1970. Permissions ('who/what can do what with what') were central to it from the start.Windows was meant for personal computers only, security has historically been lax and many programs required admin privileges to run properly. Things are improving, but Windows still has a long way to go here.

There's nothing as annoying as programs that require admin privileges for stuff.

frezik wrote:Anti-photons move at the speed of dark

DemonDeluxe wrote:Paying to have laws written that allow you to do what you want, is a lot cheaper than paying off the judge every time you want to get away with something shady.

meliescomic wrote:Macs are supposed to be user-friendly so they're hard to "crack open and fix" (so to speak).

99% of these situations can be bypassed by a little thing called "Terminal.app" that lives in /Applications/Utilities

Shishichi wrote:Applies a sexward force to counter the sexpression effect that Forward Advection can apply to fluid density, particularly along sextainer boundaries. In this way, the sextribute attempts to conserve the overall fluid volume ensuring no density loss.

I actually started making virus' for Macs back in High School because people told me that they couldn't get them (which is really irritating). My first one worked by leveraging the Mel script engine from within Maya. I made a basic loop to open random app packages. The virus self replicated itself to the entire school network wherever there was a Mac. I'm not sure how far it got from there.

antoinelepenseur wrote:I actually started making virus' for Macs back in High School because people told me that they couldn't get them (which is really irritating). My first one worked by leveraging the Mel script engine from within Maya. I made a basic loop to open random app packages. The virus self replicated itself to the entire school network wherever there was a Mac. I'm not sure how far it got from there.

Iranon wrote:Current mac OSes are based on UNIX, which has been made for multi-user systems since 1970. Permissions ('who/what can do what with what') were central to it from the start.Windows was meant for personal computers only, security has historically been lax and many programs required admin privileges to run properly. Things are improving, but Windows still has a long way to go here.

This is very true, Apple's market share is no smaller now than it was in the pre-OS X era, but the MacOs world in those days was a cesspool of viruses, even worse than the DOS/Windows world, thanks to the classic MacOs's promiscuity (viruses could be spread simply by passing floppies between computers or mounting network volumes even without reading or executing any files), lack of memory protection, and nonexistent security model. Were Mac OS X the dominant OS, OS X viruses would probably be more numerous but still vastly less common than Windows viruses are.

antoinelepenseur wrote:I actually started making virus' for Macs back in High School because people told me that they couldn't get them (which is really irritating). My first one worked by leveraging the Mel script engine from within Maya. I made a basic loop to open random app packages. The virus self replicated itself to the entire school network wherever there was a Mac. I'm not sure how far it got from there.

I hope you grew out of being a douchefuck.

It's not like I made it malicious (though I easily could have), it was a minor pestering. The only thing I was doing was proving a point i.e. that macs can get can virus', but people simply don't write them. I don't see why I feel the need to defend myself anyway, since the most intelligent thing you can muster up to say to me is "douchefuck".

If you put yourself in the position of someone who is about to commence writing a really nasty virus/malware for completely contemptible reasons, what do you think you would do?a.) Write a virus for Macs that will only have the potential to get about 10% of PCs globally.b.) Write a virus for WIndows that will only have the potential to get about 90% of PCs globally.

That is why Mac viruses have been so rare for so long. It does seem to be changing though because malware creators are cottoning on to the fact that most Mac users are Mac users because Mac OSX caters to the consumer...and generally speaking, the consumer is technically illiterate and in some cases, just plain dumb. This makes the PC-Illitarati particularly vulnerable to the "ZOMG you gotz millionz o viruses, quick download this package to get rid of them" type attacks (among others).

It may sound like I'm having a pop at Mac Users there...but I'm just being objective. Apple always has and probably always will focus on the private consumer rather than the business. Walled Gardens don't sit well with Corporate/Enterprise level business consumers.

Also: MacOS X is based on OpenBSD not Unix (even though OpenBSD is Unix like, AFAIK it is not Unix derived.)

Meem1029 wrote:Ah, interesting. For some reason I had thought that UNIX was just the certification and not an actual operating system. Which is odd since I knew very well that it indeed did exist as an os.

Happens to us all at some point! LOL Just the other day I....erm...what was I talking about?...

Sanjuricus wrote:a.) Write a virus for Macs that will only have the potential to get about 10% of PCs globally.b.) Write a virus for WIndows that will only have the potential to get about 90% of PCs globally.

Ten years ago the figures would have been more like 7% and 93%. So why was the Classic MacOs virus situation so much worse?

Sanjuricus wrote:Also: MacOS X is based on OpenBSD not Unix (even though OpenBSD is Unix like, AFAIK it is not Unix derived.)

You're mixing up BSD and Linux. Linux is the separately derived clone, BSD is one of the two main trunks of the UNIX family tree (System V is the other).